Obsidian sync rewrites note without merging

Bug reports
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1

Steps to reproduce

  • Add some content to daily note on macbook
  • open obsidian on iphone, open daily note. it is empty for very long time because obsidian syncs many notes in background, and does not prioritize opened note.
  • add content to the daily note on iphone
  • next sync on macbook just rewrites daily note with version from mobile

Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? Y

Expected result

  • in case of conflict, note content is merged, not just dropped
  • currently opened note is synced first, to prevent possible content conflicts

Actual result

  • note content is lost
  • sync of opened note takes too much time

Environment

Mobile:
SYSTEM INFO:
Operating system: ios 16.6 (Apple iPhone)
Obsidian version: 1.4.6 (105)
API version: v1.3.5
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: supporter
Live preview: on
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: dark
Community theme: Obsidian You v1.0.4
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on

Macbook:
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.4.3
Installer version: v1.3.5
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 22.6.0: Wed Jul 5 22:22:05 PDT 2023; root:xnu-8796.141.3~6/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 22.6.0
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: supporter
Insider build toggle: on
Live preview: off
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: dark
Community theme: Minimal v7.2.1
Snippets enabled: 1
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 37
Plugins enabled: 25
1: Hider v1.3.1
2: Natural Language Dates v0.6.1
3: Calendar v1.5.10
4: Find orphaned files and broken links v1.9.0
5: Text expand v0.11.4
6: Dataview v0.5.56
7: Advanced Tables v0.19.1
8: File path to URI v1.4.1
9: Vault Statistics v0.1.3
10: Auto Note Mover v1.2.0
11: Excel to Markdown Table v0.4.0
12: Paste image rename v1.6.1
13: Omnisearch v1.15.2
14: Commander v0.5.0
15: Sortable v0.3.1
16: Tasks v4.6.0
17: Page Properties v1.0.3
18: Table of Contents v0.2.0
19: Outliner v4.8.0
20: Canvas Mindmap v0.1.3
21: Fleeting Notes Sync v0.6.1
22: Telegram Sync v1.9.0
23: Minimal Theme Settings v7.2.2
24: Excalidraw v1.9.17
25: Recent Files v1.3.8

Sync log:
2023-08-23 15:19 - Fully synced
2023-08-23 15:21 - Server pushed [iPhone] Daily/2023-08-23.md
2023-08-23 15:21 - Downloading file Daily/2023-08-23.md
2023-08-23 15:21 - Downloading complete Daily/2023-08-23.md
2023-08-23 15:21 - Accepted Daily/2023-08-23.md
2023-08-23 15:21 - Fully synced

Additional information

2

Daily note on mobile app still killing content of daily note from desktop app.

3

It’s this case:

4

I have the same issue. I must say the “solution” really doesn’t sound like a solution to me. It can hardly be expected that you need to go to file recovery to restore files…
And to be able to input things on the daily note on mobile is the main use cases I have for obsidian sync.

5

I have the same issue too.

  1. Organize attachments in large quantities using the desktop application
  2. Synchronization completed
  3. Open the mobile app,
  4. Mobile application synchronization completed
  5. Desktop app starts downloading old attachments
6

it is not. from the link “If a note was created locally on a device less than a couple of minutes before Sync downloads a remote version of that note, then Sync keeps the remote version without attempting to merge the two.”
But the case is opposite: I have a daily note created in desktop app in the morning. and then later in the evening opening mobile app to add smth the the daily note. And Sync just replaces my existing desktop daily note with newly created empty mobile daily note.
Sync is not working for primary use case - reliably enter content on multiple devices.

7

@vcharhahrebel Ok, can you please attach the sync logs of both desktop and mobile when what you are describing happens?

8

I had this exact issue… I’m scared.

9

The issue may happen when there are multiple independent changes to a note.
For example we begin with Note A that is synchronized in both device 1 and device 2.
If device 1 and device 2 both independently make changes to note A, without having the possibility to synchronize in between, then the automatic merge algorithm can produce undesirable outputs.
However, there is no way really to fix this, because when there are multiple conflicting changes, only YOU (the user) know what’s right. No algorithm can merge them correctly.

There are currently two way to go about this:

  1. You either let the automatic merge algorithm attempt. If it fails, you can manually look in the previous versions of Note A which are in the sync version history and file recovery version history.
  2. Disable the automatic merging in case of conflict (We have recently introduce this). In this case, every time there is one of these “merge conflict with independent edits” an additional Note A-conflict will be generated and you have to manually review it Note A and Note A-conflict for changes.

I am asking anyone who is experiencing the issue in this thread to switch to the new “create conflict file” option and let me know what happens.

If after enabling the new “create conflict file” option, you experience conflict files being created even when NO editing has been done on multiple devices, please go here and provide the requested info.